Many of us were raised to mistake tolerance with virtue. We were brainwashed to be the bigger person, even if the other person was an inconsiderate, mean jerk.
If you grew up Christian as I did, martyrdom was expected, particularly if you were female. Notwithstanding the abuser’s treatment, you were programmed to maintain the peace and preserve the status quo, even at the cost of your own well-being.
Silence is golden is an adage drummed into me. I thought it was a testament to my character that I could bear the abuse, not say anything, and pretend someone’s action didn’t affect me. I prided myself on being tough-minded and unfazed. But this is what broke me down. The body bears the burden – scoliosis was the outcome.
Moreover, your tolerance and not calling out an abusive person’s bad behavior is often interpreted as acceptance or endorsement. Toxic people see it as a green signal to continue, and ofcourse they will when there aren’t any repercussions.
Furthermore, most abusers are careful when picking victims. They never go for the toughest Joe or Jane who will fight back. They always target the vulnerable, those who are incapable or reluctant to rock the boat.
Childhood Abuse Normalizes Toxicity
This is what makes childhood trauma survivors easy targets. We never learned to stand up and confront bad behavior. Because bad behaviors were familiar and normalized by abusive parents or caregivers. We learned to comply and capitulate to toxic authority figures to survive.
When a behavior is not addressed, abusive people assume it is permissible or that you are okay with it. This often leads to a continuation or escalation of the behavior because the individual does not face any negative consequences or receive clear feedback that the actions are inappropriate.
You don’t attract toxic people; your tolerance of bad behavior encourages and enables its continuity.
If we want to stay safe and protect our children, we must become aware of how our own responses to inappropriate or toxic behaviors enable them.
1) Keeping Silent
When someone makes a sarcastic or demeaning remark, we keep silent and repress our anger. This gives the mean person tacit permission to continue. Our doormat-like response may feel easier and safer than challenging them. However, it signals acceptability and rightness to their actions. Your tolerance greenlights its continuation.
If you don’t want this to become a pattern, nipping this in the first instance is critical. Give it back to them, call them out, and tell them to stop, or simply walk away.
Refuse to reward meaness by pretending that it wasn’t a big deal. A clear boundary – ‘I don’t appreciate those nasty comments’ – about how they treat you discourages bad behavior from repeating.
2) Joining In and Faking Laughter
Women are more likely to resort to fake laughter as a defensive strategy to appear friendly. But this usually backfires. Men may misconstrue a woman’s laughter as a positive sign of their attempted flirting. Psychoanalyst Jane Yates cautions that fake laughter causes cognitive dissonance. It tends to encourage clueless or vulgar behavior.
Often, jealous/envious people use backhanded compliments to diminish your self-esteem. Sometimes you are clueless about the machinations and intentions. You accept their praise, which only later feels like an insult.
Being aware of these types can help you deal with them. Don’t accept their digs with a smile. Show your disapproval, ask them to repeat what they said for clarification, and clarity, “That seemed more like an insult.”
Most bullies are cowards; they hate it when they feel their reputation may get tarnished.
3) Making Excuses For Their Behavior
We commonly minimize bad behavior like ‘he didn’t mean it’ or give excuses that maybe they were tired, stressed, or just having a bad day. That’s not him/her.
Excusing bad behavior is never okay because what you allow and let slide usually becomes habitual. We think we are being understanding and kind, but if toxic behavior is not addressed and cut short, it only increases with time.
We need to stop deluding ourselves, thinking it is kindness. Being understanding and tolerant about disrespect is a virtue – it’s not, it’s often cowardice.
State what was hurtful and let them know you aren’t okay with it – “I feel hurt when you do that.
Hold them accountable, don’t make excuses. Excusing crummy behavior always leads to social moral decline.
4) Fear of Conflict
Those of us who grew up with violent or narcissistic parents, letting things slide was the only way to survive. Standing up and confronting our shameless parents was met with violence, rejection, or contempt. Keeping the peace meant staying safe; there was no point stirring up things
However, fearing confrontation when we are disrespected only leads to more disrespect. Silence is often interpreted as acceptance, even if that’s not your intention. Keeping the peace often enables toxicity to grow unchecked. Toxicity grows when it is unchecked by firm boundaries.
Calmly and clearly, say it as it is. Speaking up makes the abuser aware that you aren’t going to let it slide. They may be angry at your response, but at least you didn’t stuff it in and feel bad.
Confronting someone isn’t easy if you came from an abusive home, but you must if you don’t want to be at the receiving end of everyone’s transgressions. Regaining your power and self-esteem entails learning to stand up for yourself.
5) Moral Disengagement – Thinking Their Behavior Is Okay Because Of Who They Are
In today’s society, wealth, fame, position, or status are venerated. We keep silent, thinking we may be wrong in assessing their behavior. If you grew up in a narcissistic family where successes, wealth, and power were idealized and pedestalized, you will have a hard time seeing these people’s flaws because of who they are.
Take the instance of the clergy who got away with abuse for years because they hid it behind the cloak of piety and omniscience. In my Christian family, the consensus was that if you went to church every Sunday, you were a saint, no matter how you behaved.
Growing up ultra religious home where questioning anything was met with stern disapproval primes us for moral disengagement. We turn a blind eye to actions that violate moral standards because of who that person is or what he represents.
Just because they happen to be uncle, grandmother, mother, father, priest, etc., we give them a free pass.
Scot Peck, in his book The People of the Lie, has this to say about evil: “Evil appears to be most ordinary. They live down the street, on any street. They may be rich or poor, educated or uneducated. There is little that is dramatic about them. They are not designated criminals. More often than not, they will be “solid citizens”-Sunday school teachers, policemen, or bankers, and active in the PTA.”
I still have a hard time separating a person’s morality from his exterior reality.
It’s hard to see people for who they are and stand up to someone in authority or power. But it must be done if we are to protect ourselves and our kids. Don’t let someone’s status or position fool you into acquiescence.
6) Minimizing & Gaslighting Ourselves
Minimising the effects of someone’s vile behavior doesn’t make it less harmful. Growing up in a dysfunctional family system, we were routinely gaslit by our caregivers. We stopped trusting our gut instincts and continue to self-gaslight.
We explain away bad behavior by empathizing with the abuser, or we pretend it wasn’t so bad. Or we believe we should not feel this way, maybe we are oversensitive. Doing this is damaging in the long-term. We become less and less sensitive to abuse and disrespect. It becomes our normal.
Even if it is not a big deal in the beginning, abuse usually escalates, as the frog in the boiling pot, your sense of self and self-respect get annihilated, making us unable to fight back.
When someone does something nasty, the last thing you should be concerned with is trying to be nice and polite. Baby-sitting their feelings is not your responsibility
Clearly state what about their behavior was repugnant: “That was really mean” highlights the effects of their behavior. If they do not redress their behavior, there should be consequences. Speaking plainly ensures your reality is recognised instead of brushed aside.
7) Codependency and Covering Up Bad Behavior
When one is codependent, one believes one needs the other person to survive; it doesn’t matter if they are abusive.
Codependency is also known as “relationship addiction. Your identity depends on having them in your life. You cover up their bad behavior and whitewash reality. This betrayal blindness can keep you from taking action to stop toxic behavior.
The only way out of this is by growing a stronger emotional backbone. Learning to be less codependent means having a strong sense of self, an ability to be alone, not need a relationship to feel okay, to be able to express our wants/needs clearly, to be able to set boundaries without fear, and to say no confidently and without guilt.
Covering up bad behavior to preserve the relationship only enables further abuse.
8) Self-Blame – Feeling Responsible For Their Behavior
Self-blame is often the defensive stance we take for someone else’s abusive behavior. As kids, we get blamed for our parents’ awful behavior. Because you did this, that’s why I need to drink, or because we were born, I couldn’t fulfillmy dreams.
Parental neglect and abuses creates a negative self-perception, making the child believe they are inherently bad or responsible for the parental dysfunction.
Believing “I caused it” feels safer and more manageable than seeing the betrayal of a person who we thought loved us.
You stop being a pushover when you stop taking responsibility for other people’s bad moods and actions. Get away from them. Refuse to be Jesus, dying for their sins.
Being the bigger person and tolerating toxicity fuels even more degeneration. Rebuking bad behavior and imposing consequences restores justice in the world. Evil prevails when good men do nothing.
9) Believing You Don’t Have Rights
After my mother died, my father would constantly lampoon us, saying he was doing so much for us. His measly intermittent benevolence was something we had to be ever grateful.
Because of this inculcation, I spent years thinking that I had no rights as a child, and also, later as an adult, I continued to have this belief.
We all have rights as children and adults to be treated with love, dignity, and fairness in our relationships.
I struggled with feelings of low self-worth and feelings that I wasn’t entitled to basic civility and dignity, so I kept silent. I accepted the bad treatment and gratefully lapped up the crumbs.
However, after reading and expanding my belief system, I’m learning that if someone doesn’t treat me with respect. I need to get out of dodge. I don’t need to swallow the hurt, put on a smile, and be cordial. Bad behavior has no place in my life and in civil society.
10) Hoping They Will Not Repeat It
Hope is a powerful drug that keeps us tolerating more and more bad behavior. However, hoping alone doesn’t create change.
Most abusers cycle through good and bad, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. But that’s just intermittent reinforcement that keeps us hooked on them.
A toxic person needs to show through action and words over an extended period that they have changed.
The proof is always in the pudding; don’t live in the delusion that things will get better. They don’t particularly care when there are no consequences, and you keep allowing them back into your life.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is kill the hope and move on.
11) Misplaced Loyalty and Denial
Loyalty is a positive trait, but it shouldn’t be at the cost of self-betrayal. Continuing to tolerate and stay neutral even when someone’s behavior is hurtful encourages them to continue. Staying silent or supportive is misplaced loyalty.
It is draining to cover up, smooth things, or defend someone who doesn’t have moral integrity. We become enablers. As time goes by, our own moral compass erodes.
Downplaying or hiding someone’s toxic behaviour from other people prevents redressal. It allows them to maintain an image while you get more and more distressed and uncomfortable. You aren’t someone’s PR manager; it’s not your job to whitewash anyone’s faults.
Transparency and honesty are necessary for change to happen. Refuse to cover for them, let truth speak for itself. Stop shielding and giving excuses, let their behaviour be visible. It’s not your responsibility to make them look good in spite of what they do.
True morality means stepping back or challenging harmful behaviour rather than quietly accepting it.
Abuse Usually Begins Incrementally
Many of us feel confused when a person we’ve known for some time ends up being abusive as we become more intimate. Abusers don’t unleash their toxicity in full blast at the very beginning. They usually test the waters and suck in their victims.
Abuse often starts with small indiscretions. Sarcasm, put-downs, inappropriate comments, boundary violations, covert pressure, and control cloaked as concern. It’s not so red-flaggy that you let it pass. You think, no point making a scene over something this trivial.
However, no protest to an abuser means – continue. Abusers are alert to what you tolerate and where you resist. They cunningly keep note and slowly reel you into their reality. Gradually, you get programmed to be fine with their shitty behavior.
You become their victim not because you are stupid, but because you tolerated their bullshit in the beginning, leading to it eventually escalating into life-threatening.
Being Assertive and Taking Back Your Power
Tolerance rarely fixes toxic behaviour. Without deterrents and boundaries, people often repeat the same patterns indefinitely.
If you’re always having to be the bigger person, maybe you should reassess these people who keep you company. You do not have to try to empathize or understand their behavior. Too often, “being a good person is misinterpreted to mean we must be understanding. If someone is mistreating you and does so regularly, it’s time to move on.
Taking some action will at least ensure they don’t think their behavior is acceptable. Whether that means a direct conversation, distance, or stronger boundaries. Choosing short-term discomfort over long-term pain is better. It ensures you don’t ruin your health by being stuck in an endless cycle of hope without meaningful change.
It’s not your job to make other people feel comfortable when you are uncomfortable. Tolerance enables evil to flourish.
